It's all over but for the sweating?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

OK - a question - could you identify the current negative effects of warming ?

I'll answer that if you'll answer this one. You've jumped off the Empire State Building, and are now passing the 80th floor: what are the current negative effects of your fall?

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by ksa8907

wow, im honestly sorry i clicked on this thread...

I've enjoyed the thread. It's given me opportunity to discuss the Ur-environmentalist, Buckminster Fuller, indoor windmills, Moon power™ and a number of other things.

Especially Cool Planet:
Cool Planet | The only company producing carbon negative fuels based on plant photosynthesis to remove CO2 from our atmosphere


And Arragonis is always trying to incite people to unsubscribe. I've seen him do it two or three times.


Edit: In fact I am going to quote myself because it's from another thread, A replacement for ethanol? , which coincidently has the same original poster, suspectnumber961

suspectnumber961 -- Thank you for this wonderful thread. I have watched their video over and over and took notes. Seriously. This isn't about fuel, it's about Global Poverty.

I've known for some time that the only reasonable Global Mega-Engineering approach to a War on Climate involves Biochar. Cool Planet gets it. Apparently there is a United States Biochar Initiative that just met at Sonoma State University. They were there with vehicles burning the fuel they are currently producing from their 4 acre pilot plot. They have a 100 acre plot in the high desert to receive their soil amendment.

Look at their investors: Google Ventures, GE, BP, Conoco-Philips, NRG

Their close-loop cycle spins off food and fuel as by-product. That's not the important part. The cycle is actually a virtuous spiral. Every time you go around 4-8 times you have twice as much farmland.

The company originally spec'd out 2000 first-world plants. Google.org wants 100,000 plants for the third world. That's 100,000 million-gallons-a-year plants that would catapult the locals past 'first-world' standard of living. Google is doing it to promote their Android operating system

With today's yield numbers:

1% land area -- Fuel all the world's cars
2% land area -- Zero-net carbon Emission by 2030
3% land area -- Reduce Global CO2 100ppm in 40 years

and they can convert desert to farmland to get there.

I'm a little skeptical of their Negative Fuel Carbon Cycle slide, though. It's a soil cycle, fuel is a byproduct. The part that goes "Biochar-Processing-Soil Amendment" I think should read "Activated Charcoal-Processing-Biochar".

I don't think this has anything to do with methanol. Their Biomass Fractionator uses sub-nanometer Quantum Wells to get from free-radical hydrocarbons to the finished product. Allegedly.

[NeilBlanchard]

Warmer water is less dense and it has a larger volume. Look at the temperature rise of the ocean - it is warmer and therefore it is rising. This accounts for most of the rise, but a small proportion is from melting glaciers around the world. Greenland's ice sheet is starting to melt a lot faster, as are various West Antarctic ice sheets - these will now be contributing more to raising the sea level .

How much it rises any any given location is strongly affected by the spin of the earth, and variations in the strength of gravity (caused by large masses of ice or mountains, etc.). And yes, erosion and sinking land also affects localized "net" changes. Norfolk VA has had a approximate net change of 14-16", including the ~8" of ocean rise. This has made it necessary for the US Navy to rebuild their piers at the base there so they are high enough again.

There were numerous references to ocean rise in relation to superstorm Sandy.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

There were numerous references to ocean rise in relation to superstorm Sandy.

Still, these current problems are minor, kind of like the 25 year old pack-a-day smoker's annoying little cough...

[TheEnemy]

James, Neil

Just out of curiosity could each of you answer a few questions of mine.

1. How high do you think the CO2 levels will get?

2. How much hotter will the earth become? Include some details if you can.

3. How high do you think the oceans will rise?

4. How much more acidic do you think the oceans will become?

5. In general how bad do you think it will become on this planet?

[redneck]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU...layer_embedded

[NeilBlanchard]

Here's a link of evidence of the effect of climate change:

Climate Change: Evidence

Specifically the ~8" of rise: 6.7" (in the previous century) + 2X that rate for the past decade = 6.7 + ((6.7/50) x 10) = 6.7 + (0.134 x 10) = 8.04

1. we are now gaining ~3ppm / year and this is going to likely increase as time goes on. As long as we keep burning fossil fuels at a rate of ~31 gigatons a year, it will go up at least as fast as it is now. If we reach a point where we get runaway melting of the tundra, which releases untold quantities of both methane (20X more "powerful" greenhouse gas) and carbon dioxide and/or the ocean starts to release carbon dioxide as warming increases - then all bets are off.

By the way, this last feedback forcing is what caused carbon dioxide to "lag" behind the warming in the past. The ocean water has been absorbing a lot of our increase of carbon dioxide up until now, but warmer water cannot hold as much carbon dioxide as colder water, so at some point it will begin to release it - and this will greatly accelerate the increase in the atmosphere - this could be the threshold that tips us into a runaway heating climate.

2) It depends on where we end up on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. How hot is Venus? It has a huge amount of greenhouse gasses.

How Hot is Venus? | Space.com

Above 450ppm, it is likely that Antarctica will melt.

3) It again depends on how much greenhouse gasses are in the atmosphere, and therefor how hot it gets. If all the ice all over the world melts (which would take 1,000's of years probably) then the ocean level would be about 220 feet from Antarctica and Greenland and higher because of the temperature of the water.

HowStuffWorks "If the polar ice caps melted, how much would the oceans rise?"

4) This process doesn't end well - if it gets to hot and really acidic, and if the oxygen is largely driven out of solution, then the ocean will release hydrogen sulphide.

5) We are in a precarious place. As the graphic I posted earlier indicated, we are inevitably going to see 1.5C increase even if we stopped all fossil fuel burning tomorrow. We really need to stay below 2C in order to mitigate the worst effects, and squeak by... That means we cannot burn more than ~500 gigatons of carbon, and at our current rate, this is about 13 years. And that means leaving 4/5 of the known reserves *in the ground*. If we cut back a lot now, then we can stay under that "budget" over a longer time span.

If we can sink carbon, we need to do that. Biochar is one way, and letting forests regrow in large areas, and letting the major plains return to grasslands, and probably other methods of sinking carbon back in to the ground in a stable form, so it stays put. The natural weathering process is very slow. It took about 55 Million years for the carbon dioxide level to drop from ~1,000ppm down to the ~270ppm level where it stabilized for the 650,000 years leading up to humans showing up.

I know of nothing more important that we humans have ever faced. Since we have caused it - we can stop causing it, too.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by TheEnemy

James, Neil

Just out of curiosity could each of you answer a few questions of mine.

1. How high do you think the CO2 levels will get?

Above 1500-2000 ppm. As Neil points out, after a certain point we're likely to get into feedbacks, as natural sources like Arctic methane are released.

2. How much hotter will the earth become? Include some details if you can.

15-20 degrees, enough to shut down both C3 & C4 photosynthesis in most of the tropics (at least). C3 (which the vast majority of plants use) shuts down at around 105F IIRC, C4 around 140F: C4 carbon fixation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

3. How high do you think the oceans will rise?

I think the conventional number is about 200-300 ft, but really, that's going to be the least of our problems.

4. How much more acidic do you think the oceans will become?

Don't really know enough to have an opinion.

5. In general how bad do you think it will become on this planet?

Similar to the Permian-Triassic extinction. Most vertebrate life (including humans) will become extinct, along with many plants. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian...tinction_event

[TheEnemy]

Originally Posted by TheEnemy

James, Neil

Just out of curiosity could each of you answer a few questions of mine.

1. How high do you think the CO2 levels will get?

600-700, if we go beyond 1000, insects will start to suffocate, but I doubt we will get that far

2. How much hotter will the earth become? Include some details if you can.

Depends, If I am right and the sun is responsible for the majority of the warming, maybe 1-2C if we haven't already peaked.

If I am wrong and the majority is from CO2 then 3-4C

Either way the vast majority of the measured warming will be at the polar regions with someting like 10C, with the tropical regions seeing very little warming. This is due to the fact that it takes much less energy to warm somthing up that is cold than something that is warm.

With the reduction in the temperature gradient though the winds will change/weaken with who knows what consequences.

3. How high do you think the oceans will rise?

approx 5-10 feet If I remember correctly the last warm cycle was approx 8C warmer with ocean levels 20 feet higher than today.

4. How much more acidic do you think the oceans will become?

This is the one that no matter the cause of the warming could have the bigest consequences, or none at all, right now the PH is slightly basic but beyond that I don't know enough.

5. In general how bad do you think it will become on this planet?

In general, barring a collapse of ocean life due to acidity there will be some bad, some good, and a whole lot of we don't know.

Note: I don't know if you noticed but except for these last two posts I have been just posting information with no opinion attached for the past couple of months.

[NeilBlanchard]

Ice Breaking News: This Is Your 2013 Arctic Freezing Season On Crack | ThinkProgress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YWX7...layer_embedded